Tax dodger named Treasury Sec

Josh Marshall has posted the following press release from the Citizens for Tax Justice (file is a PDF). In short, Bush's second underwhelming choice for Treasury Secretary in a row, John Snow, is a genius at avoiding taxes.

John W. Snow, President Bush’s apparent choice to replace the fired Paul O’Neill as Secretary of the Treasury, is the CEO of a champion corporate tax dodger.

• In three of the past four years, Snow’s company, CSX Corporation, paid no federal income tax at all.

• In fact, instead of paying taxes, CSX supplemented its $934 million in pretax
  U.S. profits over the four years with a total of $164 million in tax rebate checks from the federal government.

"If the President’s goal is to encourage even more corporate tax sheltering, then Mr. Snow looks like a fine choice to help him do so,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice.

Is this the message that the administration wanted to send the American people with this decision? The word "hubris" has been bantered around quite a bit the past few days, mostly within the context of the Louisiana election. But this fits the bill nicely as well. Considering the stink over provisions in the Homeland Security Department allowing off-shore tax cheats to feed from the public trough, this decision is especially galling.

Posted December 09, 2002 11:32 AM | Comments (19)